In the milk bagging industry, the current practice is to use twin-head bag forming, filling and sealing machines to bag milk at high speeds. The current speed of operation of such machine is about 120 bags per minute. However, there is a need to increase this speed in existing facilities having restricted space area. There are several problems in increasing the speeds of these machines as an increase in the bagging necessitates an increase in the speed of the conveyors. When the conveyor speeds are increased, the bags slip and pile up on one another. The bag slippage is due to the high speed of the conveyors and the fact that these bags are formed of polyethylene which is slippery, and have a flexible product inside, such as water or milk. Accordingly, increasing the speed of the conveyor has not proved to be a viable solution.
These bagging systems of the prior art also feed a bagging machine which places at least two and sometimes three of these bags into another plastic pouch which is then applied a locking tab to close its mouth opening and the pouch is then released on a discharge conveyor. Therefore, the assembly line is dependent on the continuous operation of several machines in order to maintain its rate of production. There is therefore much down-time in the assembly line as the bag filling machine needs to be serviced whenever a roll of film needs to be installed, and the baggers also need to be provided with a supply of bags and if there is a malfunction in the operation, then the bagger needs to be serviced and this also applies to the lock tab applying machine which needs to be loaded with locking tabs and also needs to be serviced in the event of malfunction. Also, these baggers need to have their bags changed if there is a need to change labels on the bag, such as to identify a new brand. Therefore, the bagger and the filler need to be stopped while the bags on the bagging machine are changed. Another disadvantage of the equipment of known systems is that they are not ergonomically positioned for servicing by a single person.